Does Pain Undermine our Basis for Existence?

“Pain is hated much more now than formerly; one speaks much worse of it; indeed, one can hardly endure the presence of pain as a thought and makes it a matter of conscience and a reproach against the whole of existence.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

Professor David Benatar claims that ‘the presence of pain is bad’. So if you gradually begin to experience back pain because you are seated in an uncomfortable position, you ought to interpret this as being bad. Really!? Surely such pain can be seen as a good because it reminds one to change or adopt a more suitable posture. Furthermore, athletes experience all sorts of pain while training and suffer all kinds of injury along the way. Without such ordeals they would be unable to excel. Pain can be a great motivator for all sorts of objectives. It’s not necessarily bad.
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So if pain is not on all occasions a bad per se, and can in fact be good for various purposes, where in particular does the logic fall short in Benatar’s statement. Well, whenever we use the word ‘is’ to say what something is, there’s a potential cognitive dissonance that comes into play. For example, if we say that Sally ‘is’ physically strong, we are inferring that she possesses an attribute of strength. This premise doesn’t stick should we find her half dead in a hospital bed.
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One might argue that she used to be strong and provide evidence to confirm this proposition. But that doesn’t do diddly-squat in the here and now. Sally clearly remains weakened regardless of her past experiences. Either she is strong or she is not. No amount of rationalizing can undo this contradiction in terms. David on the other hand believes that it ‘is uncontroversial to say that the presence of pain is bad’ when in reality there are all sorts of examples that can blatantly contradict his presupposition.
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We are entering a tricky structure if we go any further with his line of reasoning but we can use our independent-will and imagination to at least try to repair and strengthen his wobbly edifice for the sake of a thought experiment, which may in truth be what he intends for us to do anyhow. Now with that in mind, if we were to say that pain can be both bad and good in some relative sense, then we are getting the ball rolling. Can we add more dynamism to this project; of course, we are also free to think beyond the strictures of good and evil; bodily benefit and harm.
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Therefore we can also posit the idea that pain and pleasure are neither good nor bad. In truth, we may arrive at Benatar’s conclusion via another route. What if we were to add that the good can be nothing other than what ‘remains’ beneficial? Let’s run extra hard to get this kite flying shall we! So this would mean that nothing that gives us pleasure or pain can augment or deplete the good. Hold on, says the cynical voice in our heads, you are trespassing on metaphysical grounds! No we are not, says rationality, we have yet to take a single step away from our intellect.
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Very well then, at least give us an example of this so called other good. With pleasure, he-he, when we participate in intellectual activities, such as active reading or meditation practice, we improve our capacity to concentrate, focus, and sustain our attention. In turn these dispositions of the mind and/or intellect allow us to think more clearly, enabling us to discern and make better decisions.
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Unless you are bent on finding fault, even criticism itself has to admit that there’s nothing wrong with optimal performance or exercising the intelligence to locate an appropriate response. Is there any who would like to refute me here by taking the opposite point of view: that improving upon our intellectual capacities—such as concentration—goes contrary to our good? So if pleasure and pain don’t detract from our true good – excellence of mind – what does? Rage, sloth, immoderation, greed and so forth; basically all that can be categorized as extremes; namely, vice.

Our Source of Joy and Grounds for Heartfelt Duty

“With respect to everything by which profit may be acquired, nothing is better, nothing ampler, nothing sweeter, nothing worthier of a free human being, than agriculture.”
– Marcus Tullius Cicero, On Duties – Book 1.151

Here resides a summary of the principles that enable a commonwealth to thrive. Such virtues — if applied appropriately — keep our courts honourable and our government free from corruption. They keep our protectors loyal and our businesses transparent. They solidify and irrigate the human heart, restoring desolation and trimming the fat whenever we get too top heavy for our own good.
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How can we know if we are aligned with these civic virtues? All the lakes will provide clean drinking water, the fresh air will invigorate our souls, the earth will bring forth produce in abundance and the fire of all technology will first-&-foremost preserve the purity of the aforementioned elements. Neither outdated conservative values nor the far-fetched ideals of neo-liberalism can sunder our natural gravity for the balance between order and chaos.

My Reason for Reading Nietzsche

“The only happiness lies in reason; all the rest of the world is dismal. The highest reason, however, I see in the work of the artist … Happiness lies in the swiftness of feeling and thinking: all the rest of the world is slow, gradual, and stupid.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

Reading Nietzsche – My feelings are twisted into a braid of hair drawn too tightly from both ends. Will these knots ever come undone should one paw at them or are we left with no option but to tediously untangle it one hair at a time. My reason/s for inquiring into one of the greatest minds of all time has different masks and it would not be easy to see their faces over and over less they become mundane and taken for granted. Reason has more than just a face and a matching mask. It can also be inverted but let us not make the mistake of assuming that it automatically becomes irrationality like some long ago Plato

Crowned with the Laurel, the Sun removes all Sorrow

“Verily I say unto you, whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of heaven as a child, he shall not enter therein.” – Jesus ben Joseph

Part 3 of 3. Click here for part 1.

Long past the illusion of a dazzling flame, under that starry sky of night, and an eerie moonlit fright, shadowy scales fall fast away, that we might become one with beatific light. Oh what joy permeating from one’s inner core, to no longer sleepwalk through fantasies lore. Still in the world but without its cloak, eyes without sleepy crust now fully awoke.

Our inner child awakens with unbiased eyes. We are released from the strictures of man-made disguise. Even the horse in which we ride remains unbridled and free. Neither do bodily cravings have control over you and me. We are pure radiating consciousness! Mind you this is but a temporary transition. Either we reunite with the collective of this earthly world or we transcend its polarity and binary whirl. It has been said that Yeshua spent 40 days in this luminous phase before his ascension. During this time he was able to appear here and there at will and without obstruction. Some call this our astral body and others by all sorts of names, but none of that really matters for the time being.

When horror & reality are one, then all shall come undone.

“As long as any one desires life as a pleasure in itself, he has not raised his eyes above the horizon of the beast; he only desires more consciously what the beast seeks by a blind impulse.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

Part 2 of 3. Click here for part 1 or click here for part 3.

As it is written in the 16th chapter of the Book of Revelation, so do we see its completion in the 16th major arcana. The Seventh and final Bowl of Wrath depicts ‘flashes of lightning and sounds of thunder with bodies falling from the sky.’ For a cinematic demonstration of this ordeal be sure to watch the final section of the associated video; click here to access it. Even though the film director Mike Flanagan may not have consciously made this connection in his interpretation of The Fall of the House of Usher, it will nonetheless register in the minds of many who have been steeped in the Western culture.

Enter thro’ the Narrow Gate

“Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.” – Yeshua

Part 1 of 3. Click here for part 2.

This has nothing to do with little old ladies from around the bay who delight in putting the fear of Jesus into the locals through fortune telling or the embellishment of religiosity through old wives’ tales. In order to better understand the tarot sequence in question we need a general understanding of the author’s primary influences; i.e., a working knowledge of the Kabbalah (Qabalah) would be most helpful in unpacking this pictorial rendition of the Torah. Yet this is no lesson in the basics of esotericism as it is an exoteric and/or open-minded view of the transformative power of death.

The Difficulty and Joy of Dying

“The thought that my life could end at any moment frees me to fully appreciate the beauty and art and horror of everything this world has to offer.” – Dr. Hannibal Lecter

Before sinking your teeth into the commentary that follows be sure to watch the associated video first and keep an eye out for how the psychiatrist uses his patient as a means to his own end; philosophers in general can be rather effective in showing the shadow side of our medical system but nothing quite compares with the ingenuity of Free Spirits to provide a visceral and artistic feel of those who deal in the body-mind duality of psychiatry.

Is a Life without Meaning worth Living?

“What could destroy us more quickly than working, thinking, and feeling without any inner necessity, without any deeply personal choice, without pleasure – as an automaton of ‘duty’?” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

Should you ask for my opinion on the matter then you might hear me say that ‘meaning’ is somewhat overrated. The term is such a slippery eel that one may be better off leaving it outside of everyday language. Release the wiggly creature back into the ocean and see what becomes of it. Then again the more pragmatic side of me would feel lessened should others remove the concept from their practice, especially as it relates to justice and liberty.
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One chap in particular, who belongs to the lawful practice of zombie-makers (psychiatry) has left behind some bread crumbs for those of us who choose not to search for lost keys under well lit street lamps. He gives much credence to the subjective value of meaning. Let’s inject a few lines of his thought here:

Death and Life are in the Power of the Tongue

“Stop, stop, stop… I wanna go home, take off this uniform and leave the show, I’m waiting in this cell because I have to know, have I been guilty all this time.” – Pink Floyd

The faceless man brought me dead white philosophers. One after another he threw them into the giant hole that served as my abode. Eventually the bodies piled up one upon another allowing for my great escape. You might think it would have been much easier if the guy could have thrown me a rope instead. Perhaps he was afraid that he would have been yanked into my isolation or he needed me to see firsthand that which awaits us in the end: grinding poverty (and its associated costs), chronic pain, disability, or disease, trauma, shame, loneliness, unhappiness, frailty, and decrepitude.
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Metamorphosis of Selfhood

“Nietzsche’s underlying view that if we don’t make a drastically new start we are doomed, since we are living in the wreckage of two thousand and more years of fundamentally mistaken ideas about almost everything that matters.” – Michael Tanner

We can all recall a time in our lives when our paradigm of the world changed in the twinkling of an eye. For me this was as a student in elementary school while watching theatre in the gymnasium. A number of my teachers appeared in a stage play that enabled me to see them in a completely different light. Instead of a painfully tedious lecture while imprisoned to a hard wooden chair, my jailers were transformed into fun loving liberators.